re: The Iranian Election Has Left Israel Without A Bogeyman; What'll They Do Now?

quote:Now I'm not telling you that we need to invade Iran, but Iran's track record has demonstrated to me that they can not be trusted and our security could be or would be threatened if they had nukes.

based on our track record would we allow ourselves nukes if we applied the same level of scrutiny to our foreign policy as we do Irans?

quote:Now I'm not telling you that we need to invade Iran, but Iran's track record has demonstrated to me that they can not be trusted and our security could be or would be threatened if they had nukes.

Considering the fact that they haven't invaded another country in over 300 years, they have one of the best track records of any country in the region, not to mention the U.S.

re: The Iranian Election Has Left Israel Without A Bogeyman; What'll They Do Now?(Posted by goatmilker on 9/19/13 at 8:56 am to trackfan)

Please explain in your own words how going to war and bombing Iran and inflaming the ME in a war will make Israels borders more secure and actually decrease deaths from terrorist attacks? How will this increase economic output and trade with the world increasing GDP?

Netanyahu is a bitch just like the rest of Israel's government. We should never, ever, support them in anything. I would support anything that severed our ties with them. Without them the Muslims go on killing each other and we can live in peace.

re: The Iranian Election Has Left Israel Without A Bogeyman; What'll They Do Now?(Posted by trackfan on 9/19/13 at 10:36 am to CarrolltonTiger)

Truman's decision to give birth to Israel, may have been the greatest strategic blunder any President has ever made with regard to American interest, on an issue that didn't involve the military.

quote:In the period between the end of World War Two and Marshall’s meeting with Truman [May 12, 1948], the Joint Chiefs of Staff had issued no less than sixteen (by my count) papers on the Palestine issue. The most important of these was issued on March 31, 1948 and entitled "Force Requirements for Palestine." In that paper, the JCS predicted that "the Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the United States] in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives." The JCS speculated that these objectives included: initial Jewish sovereignty over a portion of Palestine, acceptance by the great powers of the right to unlimited immigration, the extension of Jewish sovereignty over all of Palestine and the expansion of "Eretz Israel" into Transjordan and into portions of Lebanon and Syria. This was not the only time the JCS expressed this worry. In late 1947, the JCS had written that "A decision to partition Palestine, if the decision were supported by the United States, would prejudice United States strategic interests in the Near and Middle East" to the point that "United States influence in the area would be curtailed to that which could be maintained by military force." That is to say, the concern of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not with [watch out, here comes a shocking statement] the security of Israel- but with the security of American lives.

quote:In the celebrations next week surrounding Israel's 60th anniversary, it should not be forgotten that there was an epic struggle in Washington over how to respond to Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. It led to the most serious disagreement President Harry Truman ever had with his revered secretary of state, George C. Marshall -- and with most of the foreign policy establishment. Twenty years ago, when I was helping Clark Clifford write his memoirs, I reviewed the historical record and interviewed all the living participants in that drama. The battle lines drawn then resonate still.

The British planned to leave Palestine at midnight on May 14. At that moment, the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, would proclaim the new (and still unnamed) Jewish state. The neighboring Arab states warned that fighting, which had already begun, would erupt into full-scale war at that moment.

The Jewish Agency proposed partitioning Palestine into two parts -- one Jewish, one Arab. But the State and Defense departments backed the British plan to turn Palestine over to the United Nations. In March, Truman privately promised Chaim Weizmann, the future president of Israel, that he would support partition -- only to learn the next day that the American ambassador to the United Nations had voted for U.N. trusteeship. Enraged, Truman wrote a private note on his calendar: "The State Dept. pulled the rug from under me today. The first I know about it is what I read in the newspapers! Isn't that hell? I'm now in the position of a liar and double-crosser. I've never felt so low in my life. . . ."

Truman blamed "third and fourth level" State Department officials -- especially the director of U.N. affairs, Dean Rusk, and the agency's counselor, Charles Bohlen. But opposition really came from an even more formidable group: the "wise men" who were simultaneously creating the great Truman foreign policy of the late 1940s -- among them Marshall, James V. Forrestal, George F. Kennan, Robert Lovett, John J. McCloy, Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson. To overrule State would mean Truman taking on Marshall, whom he regarded as "the greatest living American," a daunting task for a very unpopular president.

Beneath the surface lay unspoken but real anti-Semitism on the part of some (but not all) policymakers. The position of those opposing recognition was simple -- oil, numbers and history. "There are thirty million Arabs on one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other," Defense Secretary Forrestal told Clifford. "Why don't you face up to the realities?"

On May 12, Truman held a meeting in the Oval Office to decide the issue. Marshall and his universally respected deputy, Robert Lovett, made the case for delaying recognition -- and "delay" really meant "deny." Truman asked his young aide, Clark Clifford, to present the case for immediate recognition. When Clifford finished, Marshall, uncharacteristically, exploded. "I don't even know why Clifford is here. He is a domestic adviser, and this is a foreign policy matter. The only reason Clifford is here is that he is pressing a political consideration."Marshall then uttered what Clifford would later call "the most remarkable threat I ever heard anyone make directly to a President." In an unusual top-secret memorandum Marshall wrote for the historical files after the meeting, the great general recorded his own words: "I said bluntly that if the President were to follow Mr. Clifford's advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the President."

re: The Iranian Election Has Left Israel Without A Bogeyman; What'll They Do Now?(Posted by doubleb on 9/19/13 at 10:56 am to oklahogjr)

quote:why do they have to prove to us that they can develop their own weapons? I didn't realize we were responsible for babysitting every dictator who might want a bigger bomb

We are responsible for our own national security and like I said, Iran has said and done things to make most objective people unsure of their actions and policies.

The US isn't perfect, but it is my country, and if I had a choice to just sit here and ignore foreign threats or go out and aggressively take care of ourselves; I'd vote to take care of ourselves.

Every time we ignore trouble it seems to find us.

I do agree we get involved in wars where we shouldn't be involved and that when we get involved in wars we don't have a smart end game; however, sitting on our side of the ocean and not caring about the rest of the world is a recipe for disaster.

re: The Iranian Election Has Left Israel Without A Bogeyman; What'll They Do Now?(Posted by oklahogjr on 9/19/13 at 11:21 am to doubleb)

quote:We are responsible for our own national security and like I said, Iran has said and done things to make most objective people unsure of their actions and policies.

ah so if they aren't our allies we should tell them what they can and can't do in their own country.

quote:The US isn't perfect, but it is my country, and if I had a choice to just sit here and ignore foreign threats or go out and aggressively take care of ourselves; I'd vote to take care of ourselves.

why are they threats? Does Iran just hate us because we are america and have too much freedom?

quote:Every time we ignore trouble it seems to find us.

ah yes and when we go out looking for trouble we find it so basically your theory is that we'll always be at war whether we look for trouble or it finds us?

quote:I do agree we get involved in wars where we shouldn't be involved and that when we get involved in wars we don't have a smart end game; however, sitting on our side of the ocean and not caring about the rest of the world is a recipe for disaster.

So your worried if we do nothing it would have the same results as if we did something?

re: The Iranian Election Has Left Israel Without A Bogeyman; What'll They Do Now?(Posted by CarrolltonTiger on 9/19/13 at 11:31 am to doubleb)

quote:He had no legitimate reason to do that did he or are you are some kind of US hater that think he did?

Obviously terrorism is criminal whether done by Moslem, Communist, Western or Zionists, it just doesn't matter.

But he saw his actions as legitimate, they were necessary to get the west out of Islam lands, OBL's complaint goes back to the end of the first WW when Britain established western rule in the area and we succeeded to their leadership when they withdrew we began supporting nationalist states and we became the patron of Zionism.